352 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



as it appears also to have been in Charnwood Forest. Ireland, 

 with its lofty hills and humid climate, was, like Scotland and 

 Wales, more or less buried in snow and ice, and its immense 

 glaciers, uniting with those of Scotland and England, must have 

 filled up the Irish Sea. The Channel-area, which had shared in 

 the movement of elevation that succeeded the previous sub- 

 mergence, now also experienced a severe climate. Hard frosts 

 split and ruptured the rocks; and ne've', snow, and drenching 

 rains spread the riven dSris over the low grounds. 



The southern limits reached by the last great ice-sheet in 

 North Germany and Russia have yet to be defined. It over- 

 flowed, as we know, all the low grounds bordering on the 

 Baltic, and advanced as far south at least as the 52d or 53d 

 parallel of latitude in Germany, after which its terminal front 

 probably turned away towards the north-east, just as that of the 

 greatest mer de glace of a former glacial epoch had done. 



Meanwhile, in all the mountain-regions of Central Europe 

 large glaciers had reappeared, but they did not attain so great a 

 development as those of earlier glacial epochs. The Carpathians, 

 the Black Forest, the Vosges, the mountains of Central France, 

 and the Pyrenees, each and all had their nappes of snow and 

 glaciers ; while the severity of the climate is shown by the 

 quantities of angular frost- shattered debris which are widely 

 spread over areas where no such detritus now accumulates. 

 Even so far south as Gibraltar we have evidence of hard frosts 

 and heavy snows, and probably in Malta a similarly extreme 

 winter was experienced. 



The rivers descending from all the glaciated regions poured 

 vast bodies of muddy water down their valleys, and in 

 summer when they rose in flood produced inundations on a scale 

 far surpassing any debdcle that can now be witnessed in similar 

 or more northern latitudes. Such, in a few words, were the 

 climatic and physical conditions that supervened at the climax 

 of the last glacial epoch. How were flora and fauna affected ? 

 Long before the winters of Northern France had become even 

 so cold as they are at present, the southern forms must have 



